


take a deep breath (hold it in, hold it in)

by Lilaciliraya



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Hurt Spencer Reid, I just don't like Gideon i guess, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Sad Spencer Reid, Secrets, because what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 19:02:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14087574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilaciliraya/pseuds/Lilaciliraya
Summary: He speaks through others' words. It's easier that way.





	take a deep breath (hold it in, hold it in)

**Author's Note:**

> heyo! wrote this instead of doing homework this morning... leave a comment if you dare! i'll take any excuse to procrastinate

The first time Spencer Reid meets Jason Gideon, the man tells him that he is brilliant. He says that he wants him. That’s how he says it, too, except Spencer doesn’t notice it, then, the wording. He doesn’t realize how wrong it is because he is distracted by the way that someone is telling him he is worth something.

 

And Spencer is young and he is desperate and sometimes at night he chokes on all of the empty space around him, so he tells Gideon that he wants to join the BAU.

 

He should have known it was too good to be true.

 

-

 

Getting on Gideon’s good side is easy.

 

Staying there feels like dying and dying over and over again so that someday he might live.

 

It tears him apart inside, makes him angry, makes him miserable, makes him so confused at the world and how people exist in it. It makes his bones ache to change something, to chase down every other man out there hurting people and stop them, to stop these things from happening to anyone else, to stop anything. Just- make it all stop the way he was never able to make it stop for himself.

 

-

 

And he is drowning and drowning in his own panic and sinking down and down until he’s stuck begging on his knees for someone, anyone- for help.

 

_You have to save yourself or you remain unsaved. Alice Sebold._

 

Nobody comes to save him. He heaves stray tears into his lungs with the force of his gasping breaths and it tastes of shame of shame of shame.

 

It just tastes of skin, really. He hates it.

 

-

 

He learns a lot of truth about the world through his job. There’s so much suffering; it seeps from the pores of each enduring neighborhood no matter how many flowers adorn the gardens. It oozes through the cracks in every lopsided facade. It is viscous and resilient and unforgiving.

 

There is already so much.

 

_Speak only if it improves upon the silence. Mahatma Gandhi._

 

-

 

Spencer has so many words stuck in his head, piled up just underneath his tongue, so many words that aren’t his.

 

Maybe if he builds himself a shield of quotation marks he can deflect all of the words that threaten to break him apart. He determinedly ignores the way that the shield starts to weaken under the assault from both sides.

 

He reads from a script that nobody else could ever hope to follow.

 

_Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. Voltaire._

 

-

 

Buford happens. Carl Buford. And on the jet home he sees Morgan sitting alone with his headphones on and he wonders if he could help. If he could offer understanding like an outstretched hand. On the off chance that it might make his friend’s hurt feel a little less, he should do it.

 

His hands twitch toward the buckle of his seatbelt and he’s about to get up and sit across from this man who is hurt and angry and looks so much like the person he sees in the mirror-

 

But he’s fooling himself; they are not the same.

 

-

 

_It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen. John Wooden._

 

-

 

Sometimes at night he wishes that he’d stopped him the first time. That he’d never let any of his nightmares unfold in front of his eyes without jumping up and banging his fists against the edges of his prison cell and fighting back against the pull of the shadows.

 

But he knows that if it hadn’t happened he’d never have met all of the people around him that make his life a little brighter. He wouldn’t know that he deserved anything more.

 

It’s because of the team that he knows what a real family is supposed to be like, and sometimes, only to himself, he wonders if that isn’t worth the price he’s paid.

 

-

 

 _“_ I’m not weak.” He steals the words from the mouth of his past because he can’t think of any better ones to use.

 

He knows that no matter what he manages to shape and push from his throat- no matter how brilliant or clever or forceful he is- he knows that Tobias will still empty the syringe into his veins. Again. He knows that the dilaudid will force its way into his mind and mix everything up and teach him that he can forget and take away all of his hope because it still won’t help.

 

There is nothing he can say that will save him and so he can think of nothing worth saying.

 

Spencer is digging his own grave when he sees the lights and hears them coming- his team, this whole group here to save him like he could never save himself. He’s angry. And he knows that they will handcuff Tobias and take him away but he doesn’t want that, doesn’t want somebody else to come to the rescue.

 

He thinks, ‘I’m not weak,’ and he desperately wants it to be true. He grabs the gun and takes the shot and now a man is dead, and he has nothing to say. He still has nothing to say.

 

There are a pair of glass vials in a dead man’s pocket and nobody will know if they disappear.

 

'I’m not weak,' he’d said, but that doesn’t make it true.

 

His team is watching him, and he knew they would come. He can’t bring himself to distance the words he needs from their origin, so instead he just says, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand. Albert Einstein,” and Hotch just hugs him, gentle, and he understands, maybe.

 

-

 

Gideon leaves and he doesn’t know how to feel, what to do.

 

It’s everything he’d wanted and everything he’d feared all at once. He is free and yet he feels stranded. Gideon left him here to clean up the mess.

 

_What is left after war is silence… Mehmet Murat Ildan._

 

-

 

He is angry and angry and angry and the truth is locked up in the cells caught underneath his fingernails from where he dug them into his own skin to keep himself from screaming.

 

The secret lives inside of him, pulsating and growing and waiting just under the surface of his skin. He is terrified of the day it will claw and tear and rip it’s way out of of him. He is terrified of the blood that will splatter over his surroundings and coat the floor.

 

He is terrified of the truth.

 

-

 

He speaks through others’ words. It’s easier that way.


End file.
